


Saved the World, Etc.

by lazarwolff



Series: Ammonite [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Autistic Hermann Gottlieb, Bipolar Newton Geiszler, Film Appreciation, First Time, Intimacy, Just playing around, M/M, Millions of data points, Original Character(s), Parent Issues, Partying, Post first movie, The Scientific Method, Trans Newton Geiszler, disregarding uprising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-16 21:10:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 10,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16961520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarwolff/pseuds/lazarwolff
Summary: 'Chance favours only the prepared mind'- Louis PasteurNewt and Hermann figure out what it means to be in love when the world is not about to end.





	1. Chapter 1

When the low comes, it hits Newton like a tidal wave. About three days after the WORLD IS SAVED, WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ANYMORE, comes the MY JOB IS WORTHLESS, NOBODY NEEDS ME ANYMORE.

He meets the morning in the streets of Hong Kong, his home of five years, and realizes he will have to move, and he’ll have to teach again, and that is an unbearable thought, lectures and people asking him what was it  _ like,  _ drifting with a  _ kaiju,  _ and not even remembering his work in artificial tissue replication. The white noise, no scholarship getting written, scanning classes of hundreds to find anyone like him, being lonely again, lonely, impatient, taking it out on students, getting put on academic probation, no grants getting written, incompetent teachers’ assistants…

His phone is ringing. He looks down, sees “Hermann,” and ignores the call.

He was feeling good, too. Not to say that medication doesn’t work, but the nature of work sure as helped his mental state. And now that’s all done, woo hoo, time to spelunk into his psyche now that he can’t hide in the work anymore.

His phone rings again. He sighs, and answers.

“What,” he says.

“And hello to you too, Newton,” Hermann says. Newt doesn’t even feel the thrill of having rated a rare first name address from Doktor Gottlieb. “I’ve been trying to reach you. There’s lab work which needs to be completed.”

“Are you referring to the five feet of paperwork Tendo put on my desk yesterday?” Newt says. “Naw, Hermann, I’m not doing that.”

“You have to,” Hermann says.

“Let’s get one thing clear, dude, I don’t have to do anything,” Newt says. Of course, he doesn’t want to finish lab reports and the like because that would admit everything was finished, that he’d have no good reason to talk to Hermann anymore.

“Dr. Geiszler,” Hermann says, and Newt sighs, sniffing out a long rant where he can’t even scream a word in edgewise.

“Look, I’ll be late,” he says. “Do you want anything for breakfast?”

“Nothing from a street vendor, thank you,” Hermann says, prim as ever, and hangs up. Newt nods at the phone and shrugs.

Maybe things have gotten a little better at Massachusetts since the last time he was there, but Newton is fairly sure the Hong Kong situation of being able to find yeasted filled dumplings the size of his fist for breakfast still isn’t the norm, with a generous side of fermented black bean sauce. He eats one heavenly pork bun while walking to the Shatterdome, saves the other couple for later. And Hermann looks in his direction more than a few times, he’ll offer him one for lunch. Hermann is a black coffee for breakfast kind of guy; Newt needs something to eat in the wee hours, especially after he’s pulled an all-nighter.

He rolls into the Shatterdome, still a flurry of activity even after the kaiju being defeated, the breach being closed etc. People are smiling, laughing, working like horses to put this whole program to bed and Newt can’t join with them, because the work’s all done.

Their lab has been dismantled for the most part, kaiju samples in biohazard bags so they can be preserved to be put on display for future generations, under glass and dead. Hermann is sitting, working through endless lab reports and looking very at home. Newt makes a lot of noise coming in so Hermann hears him and isn’t startled later when he looks up from his work.

“Really, must you make such a racket,” Hermann says without any real bite.

“You interrupted my morning, so I’ll interrupt yours,” Newton snaps, drapes his jacket over the back of his chair and sits down. “All rightttt paperwork! Puh-paperwork, let’s go.”

He twirls his pen for ten solid minutes before putting anything to paper, and in what feels like the blink of an eye, he’s spent three hours to complete one procedure form. Hermann is definitely eyeing those buns that he’s surreptitiously put on the desk.

“You can have one,” Newt says, tapping his pen against the edge of his desk in a strict, soothing rhythm. “Be aware, they are from a street vendor. But I got that black bean sauce you like so much to go with it.”

“Thank you,” Hermann says, and grabs a pork bun and the sauce. He isn’t so prissy when he eats, gladly eating the thing with his fingers. Newton can respect that in someone.

“What are you going to do after everything here is decommish?” Newton asks.

“Nothing on my end is ‘decommish’,” Hermann says, with some half-assed finger quotes as though his disdain for the abbreviation isn’t completely clear. “The code I wrote for the program is still vital, useful. I have several articles to write about the methods of determining probability I utilized during the kaiju attacks. Teaching, of course.”

He already sounds like an introduction to a heavy mathematical text. Newton supposes some academes can land on their feet after any period of practical application.

“Teaching, huh?” he says, rapping away with his pen. “Doesn’t that mean you’ll have to spend time in a lecture hall, talk to people? I don’t know, Hermann, maybe you’re not cut out for that.”

“Anyone can teach,” Hermann says. “Didn’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Newt says, his pen at a hummingbird’s heartbeat now.

“Nothing,” Hermann says, with a raise of his eyebrows. “But you did spend the entire morning on that lab report.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, I don’t want to do this,” Newt says, throwing his pen down when the rhythm won’t contain his feelings. “I get you’re just moving on to the next thing, but I got to do things I’ll never get to do again, Hermann, so no I don’t want to finish the stupid lab report, though I could.”

Hermann seems taken aback, and Newt reddens, looking down.

“I mean, it’s cool,” he says with what he hopes to be a convincing shrug. “I’m okay with saving the world, obviously. I’ll just get back into the tissue engineering lab, laser assisted bioprinting, man, I mean that was going well before…”

“You’re scared,” Hermann says.

“No, I’m not.”

“I’ve been inside your head, Newton, I  _ know.” _

“What do you know,” Newton says, voice rising, panic tingeing his timbre and oh man, he should not have come to work today. “What do you know?”

Hermann splutters, reddens, and they both just stare at their desks for a while.

“I know how sometimes,” Hermann says, and sighs deeply. “We both feel as though… I don’t see why we should be apart, Newton.”

“I don’t, uh, I don’t follow,” Newt says, and can’t say any more, because Hermann kisses him, just once and soft on his lips. He pulls away, and Newt stands, looking awkwardly around their familiar lab. “What, you’d put up with me even now that the world isn’t at stake?”

“It pains me to say, but I’d do much more than put up with you,” Hermann says.

“That’s brilliant, so romantic, I feel extremely wooed right now,” Newt rolls his eyes. “Why don’t you kiss me again?”


	2. Chapter 2

Hermann is used to the routine withholding of emotions. There’s no doubt that part of this was due to his upbringing, and until now he’s never really had cause to regret his lack of emotional intelligence.

“That’s brilliant, so romantic,” Newton says, eyes rolling, “I feel extremely wooed right now. Why don’t you kiss me again?”

Hermann coughs.

“I thought drifting would cut out the middleman of wooing,” he says sheepishly. Newton snorts, takes off his glasses to clean them with the hem of his flannel.

“Wrong again, my good man,” he says, blinking. “You’ve got to up the ante when you’re in love and drift compatible. Because we didn’t, didn’t have to say anything in the Drift, man, but now I feel like we don’t have anything to say. And I’m trapped in my own head without you, you know? Or is that…?”

“You are not crazy.”

“Check  _ again,  _ Hermann.”

“Not about this, then,” Hermann says. “I am not a psychologist, but I’ve watched how the Drift changes people, slams them together like particles in the Large Hadron Collider to see if they’ll break or mesh. But we don’t. Break or mesh. We are still two whole people even with the experience of being something larger.”

“No way, you are not turning us into theoretical particles and bosons and however else you rationalize the Drift.”

“I am not rationalizing, I am using a figure of speech, and it is prosaic because I am not good with words,” Hermann says, and his voice is not rising, but he’s quite close to losing his temper.

This should be easier, what can they possibly disagree about now? But of course they’re still fighting, they’re individuals with access to each other’s most precious secrets and memories, and Newton is looking at him like he expects another shoe to drop, like Hermann is going to weaponize what he saw, like that could ever be on the table, even with their differences.

“I don’t think less of you because I know you better,” Hermann says. “I wish I’d known more earlier.”

“Likewise,” Newton says, and Hermann is surprised to find that he is relieved. “Look, I think work is probably detrimental to understanding all of this. What if we ditch and have a date instead?”

“Are you using our Drift as a way to get out of work?”

“Yes? But only marginally,” Newton says, cleaning his glasses again, and how did Hermann never realize he does that when he’s nervous? “Look, I got invited to my neighbours’ all-day world-goes-on party, and it’s going to be pretty chill. They’re barbecuing a whole pig and doing a marathon of movies they said they’d watch and realized they hadn’t when the kaiju were coming in hot.”

“That sounds educational,” Hermann says. “And I’m guessing you’re not going to get any more work done today?”

“I would literally rather drift with a kaiju brain.”

“All right. Let us ditch.”

Newton’s face lights up and he throws his pen away.

“Thank god, or you know, thank the god particle,” he says, pulling on his jacket. “I’m thoroughly depressed by all this.”

“Do you think I worship the god particle?”

“We’ve all got to believe in something, dude, even hardened atheists like you.”

“I do believe in something. I believe in the human race, and its achievements, and numbers, and…”

“I would love love  _ love  _ to discuss theology with you at some point, Hermann, but I was definitely messing with you just now.”

Thoughtful enough to match his pace, Hermann can still see that Newton is ready to leave the Shatterdome and can’t get out fast enough. Hermann is a little nervous because he can count on one hand the times he left work or school before he was supposed to, and two of those four times were for medical emergencies. Newton struts through it like a practiced shirker, and that’s no surprise, is it?

_ Under the high school bleachers, cutting Bio because it’s thoroughly bored him and being called ‘Ms. Geiszler’ is getting on his nerves, and he’s smoking his first cigarette instead. _

“When did you start smoking?” Hermann asks.

“Don’t be so scandalized. I was an early learner in all fields,” Newton sighs. “Quit when I started HRT, anyway. With all the other bullshit I was putting in my body, doctors said I should prioritize.”

“Doctor Geiszler, Doctor Gottlieb. Where do you think you’re going?”

Marshal Hansen stands there with Max, and he is looking directly at Hermann because he knows he is the weak link.

“We’re going out,” Newton says, sounding like a petulant teenager. “Paperwork will still be there tomorrow,  _ Marshal.” _

“I can’t say that I didn’t expect shirking from your colleague, but really, Doctor Gottlieb, I’m surprised at you,” Hansen says, and Hermann finds he cannot restrain the Newtish roll of his eyes.

“Find us some lab assistants for the grunt work,” he says, and hastens down the hallway. “We have time now.”

“Whaaaaat,” Newton whisper-shouts as they pass Hansen.

They leave the Shatterdome and they are not stopped.

“You told off Hercules Hansen!” Newton crows when they’re outside. “You have never done that, ever!”

“Settle down,” Hermann says, but he feels pretty proud of himself.  “I did tell him off, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t even come off like a grossmutter, dude, nice.”

The trains are not running to Newton’s neighbourhood, for kaiju-related reasons, so they splurge on a cab and hit the convenience store for a two six-packs of beer.

“Beer with pig, might as well be Berlin,” Newton says, and looks over at Hermann. “It’s a block up, will you be okay to walk?”

“Ask me once I’ve had a few,” Hermann counters, surprising himself, and Newton laughs.

“I can’t wait to see Party Hermann,” he says. “Couldn’t find him in the Drift.”


	3. Chapter 3

Party Hermann is very polite, helps in the kitchen, and makes sure everyone has a drink before cracking open his first beer. Newt doesn’t know exactly what he expected, though; there’s never been any indication that Hermann is a party animal outside of Newt’s own wishful thinking.

Xiuying and Parker have been warned/entertained by tales of Hermann since Newt moved into their neighbourhood. The couple didn’t believe Newt when he said that his lab mate was a German scientist who dressed like a caricature of a German scientist, so understandably, they are a little gobsmacked.

“He’s older than you, though,” Xiuying says, on the rooftop of their apartment building. She’s got her kitschy apron on and a handkerchief around her hair, sweating over the pig on the grill. She works at a kitchen and rescued this meat, as well as a crate of booze, from the restaurant before it got levelled by the last attack, the most badass thing anybody did that night, in Newt’s humble opinion.

“Yeah, by one whole year,” Newt laughs, and takes a sip of beer.

“It’s like you’re different species,” Xiuying says. “I mean, me and Parker have our differences, but we’re still a matching set.”

Parker is a journalist from who met Xiuying when she was investigating work harassment in restaurants. They were both workaholics with contraindicating schedules, so of course it was love at first sight. They’ve been together longer than Newt has been in Hong Kong, longer than he’s been in any given situation, and they make good neighbours with good parties.

“But you see it, right. You know. It?” Newt says, as Xiuying turns the pig with her bare fucking hands like the badass she is.

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Makes sense. Don’t ask me how. But honestly, what does it matter what I see, or anyone else? It’s what you see in each other.”

“Yeah,” Newt says. Xiuying shrugs, and looks at the pig.

“Do you want to chop some scallions, doctor man? We’re nearly done,” she says. “Real fine, if you please.”

“Sure,” Newt says, rolls up his sleeves, and is suddenly accompanied by a Hermann memory.

_ A small kitchen and he can hear Dieterich and Karla in the next room playing. He can smell the meat roasting in the oven and his mouth is watering. His mother smiles at him and asks how the potatoes are coming. He’s peeling them, but got distracted thinking about the Fermi paradox. _

“Huh,” Newt says, and begins to chop the pile of scallions fine.

They bring down a tray of pig and ginger scallion sauce just as  _ Godfather Part Two  _ is wrapping up. Hermann and Parker have been half-watching, half-engaged in a spirited discussion about academia. Xiuying and Newt exchange a look before Xiuying announces dinner.

“There’s lettuce leaves for wrapping and rice in the kitchen,” she says. “What’s something light we can put on while we eat?”

They decide on  _ Clueless _ , a movie only Parker has seen and assures everyone that they will love. Newt sits with Hermann, who is being extremely prim this time with his food; even though the lettuce wraps are for picking up the meat, he is using the chopsticks provided to carefully compose each wrap before folding it into a roll. Huh, maybe he’s trying to impress Newt’s neighbours, which implies he’s given up trying to impress Newt. Good, then.

“Are American high schools really like this?” Hermann asks with a wry smile, when Cher gets Miss Geist that date.

“As the token American, I can confirm that high schools are exactly like  _ Clueless _ ,” Newt says seriously.

“That explains so much about you,” Parker says. “Though, how long did you go to high school for?”

“A year and change?” Newt says, scrunching his forehead. “It was forever ago.”

“A year and a half,” Hermann says. “Then you deferred your acceptance to MIT and took a year off to work in a lab.”

This shared memories thing is a bit of a trip. Newt has done his due diligence to more or less forget his adolescence, and Hermann is just here with all the details. They will have to talk about that.

“What was secondary school like for you, in Germany?” he asks instead, while Parker runs up to the apartment roof to retrieve the rest of the pig and Xiuying goes to the kitchen to get more beers.

“Uneventful,” Hermann says, and sighs. “Sehr einsam.”

Newt kind of already knows this, though Hermann’s memories are very subtle, accentuated by flare ups of pain and colour.

“Look, it’s kind of weird how much we know about each other, right?” Newt says. “Like, we had boundaries before, and we don’t anymore, and I feel like I need to explain myself or something, but I realize I don’t.”

Hermann looks lost in the incomprehensible bullshit Newt has just spouted, and he drums his fingers on the table because that’s how he rewinds, tries to figure out where he lost his audience, his class, his friend.

“I want us to be on the same page, but I also don’t,” he says.

“Why?” Hermann says. “Isn’t it better, to just have everything already? Not having to guess?”

“I think the guessing is fun.”

“I don’t,” Hermann mutters. “I always guess wrong.”

“Always? Is that a statistical constant?”

“If you round down.”

Hermann is pushing around his half-composed wrap with chopsticks now, and he seems miserable.

“I would have liked to drift with my mother,” he confides, and Newt’s not sure he’s ready for this. “She couldn’t understand me, though I think she tried harder than most. The Drift would have brought us closer together. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt like she failed.”

Newt thinks about his mother, who wasn’t around enough to even attempt understanding him, and feels a pang.

“It’s a nice thought,” Hermann continues, and shrugs. “It’s entirely possible we wouldn’t have been compatible, of course. I suppose it’s better that I don’t know if we were or if we weren’t.”

“You love your mom,” Newt says. “I’m sure she knows that. Knew that. My mom doesn’t care.”

“Neither does my father,” Hermann says. “Why did they bother with children?”

“Who knows,” Newt says. “But we showed them.”

Hermann raises his beer in a toast.


	4. Chapter 4

They leave Xiuying and Parker’s soon after  _ Clueless _ finishes and more people file in for more whole pig and  _ The Seventh Seal _ . Hermann knows Newt likes to clear his head, figure things out with walks, and his leg isn’t paining him greatly tonight, so offers to accompany him.

“I’m still stuck on the Drift,” Newt admits. “I guess I just don’t like the idea of somebody knowing everything about me before I’m ready.”

“I can’t do anything about that.”

Newt puffs his cheeks and sticks his hands into his jacket pockets.

“Yeah,” he says.

“We don’t have to talk about any of it,” Hermann says.

“That won’t work either.”

Newt thinks of his parents, choosing not to talk to each other, his dad shutting down every time he tried to bring up something important that wasn’t related to his education, which was often. He can’t imagine that kind of silence with Hermann, who he’s talked to about everything, who he’s argued with vehemently, and shouldn’t stay quiet because Newt is uncomfortable about his literal soulmate (?? he files that thought away for later) knowing everything about him.

“Talking about it is better than not talking about it,” Newt finally says. “I trust you.”

“It is strange, because when I was with your memories, everything made sense, and now by myself, I am struggling to understand.”

“What part, the bipolar, or the trans stuff? Because if everything made sense to you, you’re doing way better than me.”

“It’s difficult to explain. I felt like I didn’t  _ need _ to make sense of it, like it was just,” Hermann breaks off, frustrated. “It was just all there and I could see you, I could see you as you might see yourself. True clarity.”

“What did I look like?” Newt asks. “If that isn’t the most conceited thing I’ve ever said.”

“You looked like you,” Hermann says, and Newt snorts, doesn’t mention that he hardly saw Hermann at all in the Drift, except through mirrors and in Geiszler memories, like usual.

“I guess it’s good to know that I look like me,” he says, and then his eyes widen. “Oh shit, it’s late! How are you getting home?”

Post-kaiju, Hong Kong public transit and cabs are notoriously hard to hail after dark. Why night time is seen as more hazardous than any other time of day where mathematically improbable portals to a monster world often open is anybody’s guess, but it’s a certainty that Hermann won’t be conveyed back home unless he’s arranged a ride.

“Bother,” Hermann says, and Newt bites back the nearly reflexive retort. “This is the disadvantage of making plans on the fly, as it were. I don’t suppose it would be an imposition if I were to stay with you?”

Newt pauses, and feels his jaw drop.

“You planned this,” he says. “No way you come to my neighbourhood without an exit strategy, without getting really freaked out, unless your intention was to get stranded with me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I lost track of time,” Hermann says, but there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips.

“You shitbird,” Newt says. “Next time just proposition me. What a scheme.”

“I thought you would enjoy my attempt at subterfuge.”

“I absolutely enjoy it,” Newt says with a wide grin.


	5. Chapter 5

Hermann expects Newton’s apartment to be around the same level of chaos as his half of their lab, and is surprised by the relative order of the place. There’s more books than the shelves can hold, but the kitchenette is kempt and there isn’t anything on the floor. Perhaps it is the apartment of someone who comes to work and stays there for days at a time. Newt throws his jacket on a hook and walks over to the kitchenette, shoes still on.

“Can I get you tea, or?” Newton says, and opens his fridge. Hermann can see a variety of condiments, some beer and an ambitious amount of veg. “I’m pretty full from the party, but I’ve got beer, and stronger stuff if you require.”

“I’ll take a beer,” Hermann says. “I assure you the prospect of staying at your apartment is not so horrendous I need to tap into your reserve of spirits.”

“I don’t know, I don’t entertain,” Newton says. “Never got the hang of it.”

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m hardly an entertainer. I just have a large extended family.”

“And all those faculty mixers I saw in the Drift?”

“I’m a very impressive drinker,” Hermann says. “There’s something entertaining about that, apparently.”

“I was hoping we could be one of those couples that has company,” Newton says. “We’ll need a bigger apartment though.”

Hermann’s chest swells a little when Newton refers to them as a couple, even in passing (even as a joke?) and he nods.

“I think I would like that, though only if you will play the piano on such occasions,” he says. Newton blushes and runs a hand through his hair, opens the fridge door and focuses intently on its contents. “Newton?”

“I haven’t played piano in ages,” he says. “I probably sound like shit. I mean, you had the discipline to actually learn, not just plunk out a tune on a keyboard. I have this block around learning music, man.”

“You just haven’t had the right teacher,” Hermann says, feels the memories of Newton’s mother’s silent disappointment while he plays quite adequately for a child of six, the nightmare instructors and the late night stress of ‘why can’t I get this right?’ “I don’t intend to force you into it, but I know you love music.”

“Hell, maybe your competence transferred to me in the Drift,” Newton says, and puts a beer in Hermann’s hand. “What do you think? Saving the world, and then playing a concerto without stops from beginning to end- would my mother be proud then? Ugh, she gets into my head sometimes. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve talked to her in ten years and it’s her opinion that matters the most, obviously.”

“The burden of having parents,” Hermann says, thin-lipped. “You’re the biologist. What part of our design spares us from the emotional toil of heredity?”

“We get to be better,” Newton says. “That’s the only consolation. I’m sorry you invited yourself to my place, and now you have a front row seat to all my stupid mom insecurities. Subject change?”

“What do you propose?” Hermann says.

“Tell me where you’re going, after this,” Newton says, and sits down with Hermann. “Should I brush up on my Deutsch?”

“You’d follow me?”

“You followed me, into the kaiju brain,” Newton says. “I want to return the favour. K-science is going to be pretty passe soon anyway.”

“What about your research in artificial tissue?” Hermann says. “That was life-saving work. I’m sure MIT still has need of you.”

Newt nods.

“MIT,” he says. “An ocean away from you.”

“Who’s to say,” Hermann says, and grins. “My father is in Europe, after all. Perhaps it would be better if I were on an entirely different continent, at least until the last of his bloody walls crumble into the ocean and become coral reefs, nein?”

Newton smiles back, clearly charmed.

“I love when you talk shit about your dad,” he says. “Your nose crinkles like you’re going in for the kill.”

“You’re right. There should be no more parent talk,” Hermann says, feeling his ears colour. “Tell me about MIT. Why don’t you want to go back?”

“I never said I don’t want to go back,” Newton says, and sighs. “But I guess it’s pretty obvious once you’ve been in the ol’ brain box or talked to me for more than ten seconds. Uh, if I go back to MIT that means everything’s back to normal.”

“Is it fruitless to remind you that you’ll be welcomed as a hero?”

“Maybe it’s your good influence, but for some reason my ego won’t break my stultitude.”

“That is alarming,” Hermann agrees, to Newton’s outraged snort. “You don’t want to go back to Massachusetts. I can’t blame you, it’s a dreary echo chamber. What’s the harm staying in Hong Kong?”

“What do you mean, staying?” Newton asks, and Hermann rolls his eyes. For someone so terribly clever, Newton can get stuck on a single option and become infuriatingly uninvestigative.

“You don’t want to go back, so stay,” he says. “Conduct research from the city you love and only leave if someone is paying for a hotel.”

Newton looks as though he’s actually not thought of that.

“Oh,” he says. “I don’t have to leave. I can live in Hong Kong. The artificial tissue project has been going fine without me. I won’t be ruining anybody’s life if I don’t go back.”

“Precisely.”

“And if they need me…”

“Then they can pay for your hotel,” Hermann says. “Short of the world nearly ending, that was my strategy for staying in Berlin.”

“You’re a little bit of a genius,” Newton says, and surprises them both by kissing Hermann square on the lips. Hermann leans into the kiss and it’s almost as though they’re drifting again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, note the rating change. I haven't written sex in this quantity before :/ please forgive it.

“Is this all right?” Hermann asks. Newt’s tie is on the ground, his collar is unbuttoned and he wishes Hermann would kiss him again but also that he could eject the sofa into space and nope right out.

“I haven’t slept with anyone ever,” he blurts out, “But I guess you know that already!?”

“I know,” Hermann says with a wry smile. “I didn’t have to drift with you to know.  _ Six _ PHDs, Newton? The rest of us were getting laid.”

Newt blushes, laughs, and lets Hermann fumble with his button up shirt for a little while longer before he takes over, freeing up Hermann’s hands for his own shirt, revealing the skinny genius physique Newt’s been hot for these last few years. Hermann looks more focused than usual, and Newt touches his face.

“What’s eating you,” he says.

“I don’t want to put my foot in it, but I would like to call you beautiful.”

Newt blushes all the way to his ears and hides his face.

“Newton?”

Hermann sounds aggrieved and Newt knows he should say something.

“Nobody’s called me that,” he says, removing his hand from his face. Hermann looks apprehensive, and he stutters in his rush to reassure him. “It’s weird. Nice. Weird-nice. I could get used to it.”

“I hope so,” Hermann says, “I intend to call you beautiful as often as I can remember.”

Which is a little too romantic, and Newt’s starting to wonder if he got brain damage from drifting with a kaiju and if the world is still awful, but he’s just in a coma, when Hermann kisses him again and his hands rest on Newt’s belt.

“Yes?”

“ _ Yes _ .”

Naked and uncommonly still, Newt watches Hermann take off his pants and fold them before setting them on the floor with the rest of their rumpled clothes. He wants so badly to ask, but doesn’t want to get them off track right now.

“Bed?” Newt asks instead, mouth dry. “Making out on the sofa is one thing, but ergonomically. I mean my mattress is old, so maybe there’s not much of a difference?”

“Let’s get to bed,” Hermann agrees.

Lying side by side then, facing each other and they haven’t even kissed that much, even though kissing is something Newt is liking more and more these days, but they’re just kind of looking at each other and touching in a way their animosity hasn’t allowed for years. Newt reaches to kiss Hermann, who reciprocates and maybe they could just do this for the rest of their lives? It’s got to be the plan with the most appeal.

“I want,” Newt mutters into his mouth, and pauses because he feels ridiculous even saying it. He moves to hide his face again, but Hermann sort of pushes his hand away.

“What is it you want?”

“Want you to fuck me.”

“I can arrange that,” Hermann says, and Newt snorts in spite of himself. “And then I would love to give head.”

The sound Newt makes could be classified as adorable, and he rolls over to pull condoms and lube from his bedside table. He never thought he’d actually use them but preparedness and optimism are second nature if not first. He hands Hermann a condom as nonchalantly as he can possibly manage, and puts lube on his fingers. One of the fun/irritating side effects of HRT is that everything down there is dry as a bone, but it’s worth it to catch Hermann’s besotted glance while he prepares himself. Hermann who thinks he’s beautiful, who clearly needs a stronger prescription on his grandpa glasses, who pulls Newt to him for a kiss and reaches down and makes Newt moan in his mouth.

“I’m ready if you are,” Hermann says, and Newt nods, not trusting himself to speak. They reposition and then Hermann is  _ in _ Newt, and Newt’s face is buried in Hermann’s shoulder because it feels good and he doesn’t want Hermann to see him.

“ _ Move,”  _ he says hoarsely, and shudders when Hermann obliges.

It’s over faster than either of them would like, but Newt can’t stop grinning, doesn’t even attempt to hide it.

“Do you want me to…?” Hermann asks, gesturing, while they both stare at Newt’s water-stained ceiling.

“Umm,” Newt says, and bursts out laughing. Hermann looks only slightly offended. “Yes? I don’t know, what do you get out of it?”

“The satisfaction of  _ seeing _ you.”

Hermann, the unexpected romantic, killing it in bed.

“I’d want to reciprocate, dude, and I don’t know how good I am at it.”

“As though you can’t learn.”

Newt curls into Hermann, head resting against his shoulder.

“I’d love to learn.”

“You’re tired.”

“ _ We’re _ tired.”

“If you say so.”

To Newt’s immense satisfaction, though, Hermann falls asleep first.

* * *

Newt wakes up and his bare feet are cold. He looks over, sees Hermann rolled up in blankets because of course Gottlieb is a blanket hog, what else? Quietly, so as not to wake the only other person he knows who kept the Shatterdome’s mad hours, Newt slips out of the bed, and pulls on pyjama pants on his way to the kitchen. He starts a pot of coffee, and then looks in his fridge to see what he has.

There are no eggs, and just a heel of cured meat best relegated to the soup pot, but there are potatoes (in the fridge? An oversight on his part, surely), and when there’s potatoes there’s breakfast. Newt cubes them and lets them fry in his favourite pan, a dinged monstrosity he picked up at a garage sale in the States. He dices tomatoes and half a hot pepper, vaguely leaning towards having a fresh salsa with all the carbs he’s about to eat.

“Morgen,” Hermann’s sleep-deepened voice. Newt looks over and sees that Hermann has co-opted a blanket from the bed and looks fairly bleary.

“Hey, good morning,” he says. “Help yourself to coffee. Do you like spicy?”

“Der Kaffee ist wurzig?” Hermann says after a blank silence, eyeing the coffee pot suspiciously.

“No dude, the coffee’s normal. I’m making salsa,” Newt says. Hermann pours himself a generous cup, nothing in it, and takes a deep drink. “Geez, you really need that caffeine jolt, huh?”

“Yes,” Hermann says, and doesn’t elaborate.

Newt bites back a smile and turns back to his cooking, chopping a bunch of parsley and putting it in the tomato mixture. The potatoes are just about finished, deep gold on all sides and singing slightly against the pan’s cast iron surface. Newt scrapes them unceremoniously onto a plate and puts the salsa in a bowl, not too spicy because he didn’t get confirmation from Hermann either way on that. By then, Hermann is through his coffee and looking a little more amenable to conversation.

“I didn’t know you cooked,” he says, going to the coffee pot. “I thought you subsisted on energy drinks and street food.”

“My uncle taught me the basics before I went to college,” Newt says. “To save me from the  aforementioned diet of energy drinks and street food. He was only partially successful, but I know how to use a knife, and even I need to eat a vegetable now and again.”

“I can’t cook at all,” Hermann admits. “I’m quite useless in the kitchen, except for washing up.”

“Sounds like a fine arrangement to me, symbiotic,” Newt says, and sets a plate in front of Hermann, kisses his temple, bites back the Charlie Brown smile that threatens to split his face. “Do you want to go to work today?”

“Yes,” Hermann says, his no-nonsense glare fully in place before it cracks. “You’re smiling like a fool.”

Newt shrugs, tries to stop smiling, and turns back to the stove when he finds he can’t.


	7. Chapter 7

Hermann is quite poor at discerning expressions, which is why Newton’s openness in all things was such a relief during the stressful time which was preventing the apocalypse. Everyone else could have been inscrutable, puzzles for Hermann to solve, but Newton was always easy to read.

Though the Drift complicates things. Now Hermann feels prickles of Newton’s energy, is intellectually aware of the difference between his true happiness and when his thoughts are racing too fast for him to be sad. And now Newton is in alternating parts bracingly honest and withdrawn, a situation Hermann is going to be troubled by if it continues and he can’t learn the new behaviour.

Newton kisses his temple, putting a plate of breakfast in front of him.

“Do you want to go to work today?” he asks.

“Yes,” Hermann says automatically, but can’t keep a serious expression in front of Newton’s wide smile. “You’re smiling like a fool.”

Newton shrugs and turns around, and Hermann can almost hear him beaming still, regrets that he called him a fool for smiling. But it would be too much time to explain why he regrets it, and intrusive and strange for Newton besides.

His leg is starting to hurt. Newton’s bed was just as ergonomic as promised, ie. not at all, and yesterday was a day of exertion. Newton turns around just as Hermann starts to rub his leg.

“I have Motrin,” he says with a crook of his eyebrow which Hermann has indexed to mean either concern or amusement, much to his own confusion. “Will that tide you over until we get to work?”

“I think so,” Hermann says. “Can you feel…?”

“Not feel, in so many words,” Newton says. “Just… I’m guessing you’re still getting some of me too.”

Hermann nods, doesn’t elaborate in case this is the sort of thing Newton wanted to unfold in his own time, without the aid of the Drift. Newton doesn’t say anything, and goes to get the Motrin, setting the bottle in front of Hermann with a glass of water.

“It takes a few minutes to work,” he says.

“Thank you.”

Hermann swallows a couple pills, looks up when Newton takes one too.

“Headaches,” Newton explains with a shrug. “I find it’s best to preempt them. I get them  _ after  _ I’ve been stressed, which is great.”

“You’re not stressed?”

“Not now.”

Newton smiles again and then winces, and when he does, Hermann feels a slight twinge above his right eyebrow. Curious.

“I’m going to get dressed,” Newton says. “And then I’ll call a cab. We’re going to be late.”

In the back of the cab, Hermann takes Newton’s hand, and Newton doesn’t pull away. They don’t talk the whole way and there’s little to be said.

The Shatterdome is less frantic today, and their lab seems to be cleaner than they left it yesterday. Hermann wonders if Hansen actually found a lab assistant or something. Newton swivels into his lab chair and grabs a pencil, looking at the pile of paperwork, tongue out.

“I can do the rest of these,” he says. “Right?”

“You certainly have the capacity,” Hermann says, sitting at his desk and starting his to-complete pile by neatly shepherding some papers from the overall mess. “Whether you exercise said capacity is up to you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Newton rolls his eyes, and this is the rapport Hermann is familiar with, the barbed quips and the ersatz sardonicism, so arch even Hermann can detect it. He wonders to what degree Newton performs for him, for others, if Hermann has been using such broad reactions as a crutch for understanding.

“Oh, you’re in,” someone says, knocking quietly on the door frame. Hermann looks up and sees a techie, uncharacteristically clean and holding a clipboard. “Marshal Hansen assigned me to help with your paperwork.”

“Thank you, Private Barrows,” Hermann says, squinting at her name plate. “You… you were in the coding team for the Mark III Restoration Program, yes?”

“Yes, I worked on Danger,” she says with some pride, pushing glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“That was some very good work,” Hermann says. “I would love to discuss the particulars with you some time.”

“Yes! I mean, that would be… great!” Barrows says, and coughs. “But the issue at hand. What can I do here?”

“ _ Thankyou _ for asking,” Newton says, and completely pulls out a drawer from his file cabinet. “You’re Klee Barrows, right? How do you do with forensic handwriting analysis? Forensic linguistics?”

“My chosen field was in forensic pathology, before the kaiju and all,” Barrows says. Newton nods his I-know nod and sets the drawer on a rickety table that used to groan under the weight of kaiju guts.

“Drift compatibility,” he says. “We have endless testing to determine if two people have it, but we should have been streamlining the process as much as we could for the future, when drifting is going to be used for everything, for everyone, improving and enriching lives. Me and Hermann are Drift compatible. We only found out through chance, we totally could have died…”

“You’re Drift compatible?” Barrows repeats.

“I know, difficult to believe,” Newton says with a wry smile. “ _ And  _ almost impossible to discover given the current test, which requires two able-bodied, fit and beautiful people to beat the shit out of each other with sticks. Not a universal benchmark. So, I was thinking, can you do a comparative analysis of our body of work while we were in the Shatterdome, and look for… whatever it is? The criteria which determine Drift compatibility.”

“That is extremely vague,” Barrows says. “And also not at all what I’ve been asked to do here.”

“You were asked to help with paperwork, right? Well, this is work on paper,” Newton says.

“This is way better than backdating your lab reports, no offense,” Barrows says. “I won’t disappoint you, Doctor Geiszler.”

“Call me Newt,” Newton says, and grins at Hermann. “This is going to be awesome!”

“Newton, did you commandeer a lab assistant meant to simplify our work so she could help you with a brand new project consisting of an indeterminable amount of data points?” Hermann asks, putting on his glasses as severely as he can.

“Yes? But there’s a rreally good reason for it,” Newton says, and Hermann can’t argue, because he agrees.


	8. Chapter 8

Maybe it’s Hermann rubbing off on him, but the mantra of ‘Die Welt kann besser sein’ has been echoing in Newt’s head with Gottliebian incessitude, and while that deadly stillness is returning in fits and starts from mania-enforced vacation, there’s something about the Drift that kann actually besser die Welt, so tackle that before the inevitable crash.

He resists the temptation to check his e-mails, knowing all five accounts are filled with material/academic nonsense that’s going to distract from this new endeavour, or completely depress him with the mundanity. He talks to Klee, who’s keen and able to understand his slapdash instruction, aware that Hermann is watching him.

Newt noticed Hermann’s observation of him during one of his more paranoid moments. He never brought it up because to a certain extent, he always thinks he’s being watched, and having as high a profile as he does, with as much oversight as his job does, he’s basically right.

And he knows now that Hermann watches him because he thinks he can study Newt like a complex text, that if he focuses enough the contradictions and the hidden meanings will become clear. Newt wonders if that’s actually working, and once it does, if Hermann will share any potential findings with him.

When Newt was younger, he figured he would be dead before he was thirty, and his bias was mad confirmed when motherFUCKING GODZILLAS started walking around and killing everyone. But he didn’t die, even when he was face to face with a kaiju, and now he is thirty, and the chances of random death by giant monster are close to nil.

He raps a beat with his pen and misses part of what Hermann says to him.

“What?” he says, frowning.

“I asked if you’re alright,” Hermann says. “You’ve been unusually still today.”

Newt looks at his watch. Cool, he’s been thinking about his weird and long life for five hours. Barrows is long gone, and the pile on Hermann’s desk has been separated into three smaller ones, indicating a method and completion.

“I’m great,” he says, shuffling some random paper. “Tired, maybe. You did keep me up.”

Hermann looks skeptical.

“Newton, if you are having difficulties…”

“I’m always having difficulties, dude-”

“Then you should talk to me.”

“I can  _ manage _ it, I always have,” Newt snaps, angry and he wishes he weren’t but he is, “It’s just  _ messy  _ and I know you hate messy, Hermann, but it’s the way I know how to manage, and if you ask me to slow down and talk about it…”

“I don’t hate messy,” Hermann interrupts, and Newt chokes on the rest of his treatise. “I understand you can manage, I think you have a remarkable mind and the systems you have in place for it have led to uncommon success.”

“So what is the problem, exactly?” Newt asks, feeling a headache coming on and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Die Welt kann besser sein? Is that it? Der Newt kann besser sein?”

“Is that a problem?” Hermann asks.

“Yeah,” Newt says, and with the truth he feels the exhaustion. “ _ Yeah _ , Hermann, it’s a problem. I can’t keep surpassing myself, not like you. Unsustainable. I’ve been ready to peak for five years but I had to put that on hold.”

He doesn’t want to look at Hermann, wishes last night didn’t feel like an eternity away from this now, wishes they could be back to a simpler honesty, the easy promise of days free from disaster and the rush of skipping work and pledging to leave the shitty parts of their lives in favour of each other.

“I’m not trying to solve you,” Hermann says. “But the post Drift is a tool which was not at our disposal before. In a way, we are still sharing a neural load."

“It's not sharing if you take all my bullshit without giving me any of yours,” Newt says.

“Oh, I can guarantee there will be plenty of time for my bullshit,” Hermann says, just as the phone rings on Newt’s desk. Hermann answers without thinking. “Research division, this is Doctor Gottlieb.”

He listens, and nods. Newt can’t tell if he’s getting good or bad news.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’ll let you talk to him.”

He gives Newt the phone.

“You’ll want to take that,” he says, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

“Okay?”

Newt takes the phone.

“Hello?”

“Doctor Newton Geiszler?” a gently accented voice on the other side. Newton finds Hermann is holding his hand.

“Yes,” he says.

“My name is Mikhael Broechner, I am from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute. I am happy to inform you that…”

The world stops, there’s a dull roar in Newt’s ears and Hermann is squeezing Newt’s hand.

“I must congratulate you again, Doctor Geiszler,” Mikhael Broechner says. “As the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. We will be making a statement to the press soon.”

“All right,” Newt says. “Thank you. Thank you! Very much.”

Mikhael Broechner hangs up. Newt is still holding the phone, and looks at Hermann, can't think of anyone else who should know the news before everyone else in the world.

“Um,” he says. “I just won a Nobel Prize.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A smaller chapter. Is this the plot? I do not know. I did a bit of slapdash research into how people come to receive a Nobel Prize. It's pretty cool, very hush hush even for the winner until the last possible moment.
> 
> Cool sidebar: Sir Frederick Banting is the youngest nonfictional recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. He co-discovered insulin and its use as a treatment for diabetes by the ripe old age of thirty, and received the Prize two years later. He was clearly OP, and died in a plane crash before the age of fifty, but his work in insulin turned diabetes from a death sentence to a manageable condition.
> 
> Of course, without affordable insulin, people with diabetes are once again consigned to a quality of life that was untenable then and unconscionable now. The idea of an insulin -industry- would have been repugnant to Banting, who sold the patent for insulin for a (Canadian) dollar so pharmaceutical companies could manufacture the life-saving drug en masse, instead of resorting to inferior product.
> 
> https://makeinsulinaffordable.org/resolution/


	9. Chapter 9

The phone kept ringing, the night Lars Gottlieb won the Nobel Prize for Physics. Hermann remembers that the phone kept ringing, after that first phone call. His father didn’t let Mother answer it, and she endured the sound until she absented herself from dinner, when she ripped the contraption out of the wall.

“The work is what is important,” Lars said to the children, obliged to remain until their plates were clean. “Those who work so they can chase fame and pleasure are not to be trusted or respected.”

It was a quiet, grim evening, like many others in that house. Hermann can’t imagine his father collapsed into his wife’s chest after that loveless dinner, crying, laughing, trying to get words out but failing in spectacular fashion.

“It’s absurd,” Newton finally manages, and lets Hermann stroke his hair. “Completely absurd.”

“If the world hadn’t been unseamed,” Hermann says. “You and your colleagues on the bioprinting project would have been recognized earlier. It is phenomenal work.”

Newton laughs at this, wipes his eyes hastily.

“Don’t say that man, it’ll go right to my head,” he says, and covers his mouth, trying to stifle a hysterical giggle. “This is the weirdest shit that’s ever happened to me. I need to call Kiera and Harold. They must be freaking out right now. What time is it in Massachusetts right now, even?”

“Four in the morning,” Hermann says, and Newton is already dialing his fellow researchers with his cell phone.

“Kiera,” he says. “It’s Newt.  _ Right?  _ Is Harold awake? Are you… oh my god,  _ I am ver-fucking-klempt.” _

Far from verklempt in its classical sense, neither Newt nor Kiera can seem to get words edgewise while talking to each other. Hermann hasn’t met Kiera and Harold Augustine, but Newton often describes them as the rare combination of unconditional kindness and examined intellect. He’s animated to excess while on the phone, gesticulating with the hand not occupied and nodding when cut off by the Doctors Augustine’s excitement. Hermann imagines the focus and energy in the bioprinting lab, can’t even imagine how fructile the environment must have been.

“I gotta say,” Newt says, in a moment of stillness, difficult sincerity. “You guys both  _ made _ this project, you’ve done so much good, you deserve this.”

He listens, and his eyes are glistening again.

“Yeah, I’ll try to remember that,” he says. “I need to call my dad. He’s going to be pissed I woke him up. I’ll see you both soonish. Yeah,  _ Stockholm _ . Bye. Love you.”

He hangs up, and pauses, looking a little unmoored.

“Do you want to call your dad?” Hermann asks.

“If he sees it on the news before he hears from me, I’ll never hear the end of it,” Newt says with a nervous laugh. “He’ll be proud, right? He’ll be proud.”

“Of course he’ll be proud,” Hermann says. Newton chews his lip, and nods in agreement, dialing a number in from memory. It rings a couple of times, and then Newt jumps a little.

“Dad!” he says. “How are you? Yeah, is it early? I guess I lost track of… Look, I have something to tell you. It’s good news, I promise. The Augustines and I won the Nobel Prize for medicine.”

He holds the phone a little away from his ear, and even Hermann can hear the excited Geiszler shriek on the other end. He listens for a long time after that, and sits down in his chair, rolling it to Hermann so he can rest his head on the other’s shoulder while Jacob Geiszler talks rapidly.

“I am going to come home, soon,” he says, and then looks at Hermann in a panic. “Yeah, I’m just putting things to bed here in Hong Kong, and I reckon I’ll be stateside sooner rather than later. Look, Dad? I love you, I’ll see you soon… I’ll tell him you said hi, yeah. Haha, eventually, maybe when I come to visit. I could entice him over with math shit.... I will  _ definitely  _ let him know. Okay, bye.”

Newton lets out an exhale and Hermann wonders what it would be like to have a pleasant, if loud, conversation with his father. Newton hugs him and, surprised, Hermann hugs back.

“My dad says hi,” he says. “Look, you don’t have to stay, but I’m going to sit here for a while. I’m pretty sure the news is going to be out soon and I just don’t think I can do all the people yet.”

“Do you want to be alone?” Hermann asks tentatively.

“Not if I can be with you,” Newton says.

“That settles it then.”

Newton’s phone starts ringing after that, lighting up with texts and e-mails. Newton takes the battery out, and they sit together in the ensuing silence, holding hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More original characters, woops. I expect there will probably be more of the Augustines in the future. If it's any consolation, they're pleasant enough. I wonder a lot about the dynamics teenage Dr. Geiszler had with his adult colleagues in MIT.
> 
> My main inspiration for Hermann's father is the Bishop from Fanny and Alexander. I just watched that movie and it messed with me.


	10. Chapter 10

Newt isn’t sure if it’s possible to feel closer to bursting than now, holding Hermann’s hand and head still buzzing with the news, the unbelievably good news that a part of him is still pretty sure he’s imagining. But, walking through the Shatterdome and getting congratulations from harried techs and cadets, he realizes he must have been completely cogent when he took that phone call.

“My man Geiszler!” Tendo yells from the end of a long hallway, and Newt grins as he approaches. “Are you kidding me, dude? Congratulations!”

“Yeah, we’re finally making a go of it,” Newt says, thrusts up Hermann’s hand like Hermann just knocked out Apollo Creed.

“ _ Newton _ ,” Hermann says, and turns a shade of red that Newt definitely wants to see again. “I don’t think that’s what Mr. Choi is talking about.”

“It’s for sure what I’m talking about now,” Tendo says, and he takes both of them in a big hug. “Drink with me tonight. I’ve got some fine stuff I’ve been saving for the end of the world, but I’m not waiting ‘round for that anymore, so let’s drink to you two!”

That sounds good. Newt hasn’t had a chance to kick it with Tendo despite years of working with the guy, and any chance to see Hermann’s nose get all blotchy like it does when he drinks is welcome. He turns to Hermann, who shrugs.

“I hardly have a bustling nightlife schedule for which to account,” Hermann says.

“You schedule your nightlife?” Newt asks, grinning.

“It’s a turn of phrase.”

“I am positive it is not.”

“Are one of your PhDs in the English language?”

“Gimme a break, you know I’m barely coherent, I’m just  _ saying  _ that nobody says that...”

“Doctor Gottlieb.”

Hermann stiffens, and drops Newt’s hand. They turn around and Lars Gottlieb is standing there. Newt met Hermann’s father once, at a conference in Zurich, found him so remote that Newt wondered who was piloting the flesh Jaeger. He seems slightly more present now, all in black as though mourning his credibility in scientific circles. After being in Hermann’s head and seeing Gottlieb Senior’s parenting, Newt has a few things he’d like to say to this guy. But yelling won’t work. Easier to puncture.

“How’s he supposed to respond to that? Say Doctor Gottlieb back?” Newt says, and to his everlasting pleasure, Hermann snorts. Lars’ laser eyes are now squarely focused on Newt, but joke’s on him, Newt has little to no fear of piercing gazes, especially now that Stacker Pentecost is dead.

“Congratulations on your success,” Lars says in heavily accented English. “I would shake your hand but I have no desire to contaminate myself with kaiju viscera.”

“You really put the rude in prudence, Doctor Gottlieb,” Newt says, but the primo wordplay barely registers.

“Excuse us, Doctor Geiszler,” Hermann says, and being demoted somewhat to honorifics is a little startling, but Newton nods and peels off with Tendo, whose eyes are wide.

“This is the first time they’ve been in the same room together since the ocean walls got funded,” Tendo says. “Maybe I should call security.”

“You don’t want to see Doctor and Doctor Gottlieb go mano a mano?”

“I do love a good scientist fight, but this could get ugly, and fast,” Tendo says, presses a giant blue button on the wall, just as Newt hears Hermann’s voice raise in their conversation. Newt’s German isn’t as good as it used to be, but he can pick out his name in close association with words like ‘Strickheit’ and ‘Respekt.’ The argument is getting broadly conceptual then, an area where Hermann has always had the upper hand with Newt.

“Ich werde das nicht weiter besprechen,” Hermann finally says in a flat, final tone, and Lars’ lips thin even more, as though that were possible. “Er hat diesen Krieg mit mir gefuhrt und du hast mich verlassen. Das Programm verlassen.”

“Ein Kind, fehlt in der Disziplin,” Lars throws back. “Lass sie von selbst fallen. Geh nicht mit ihr.”

Hermann turns red, and hits his father with a slap that resounds in the hall. Lars feels his face and nods.

“Gleiches zieht, Gleiches an,” he spits, just as a security detail arrives. “Do not lay hands on me, I am leaving.”

And he does. Hermann shakes out his hand and Newt can’t remember a time when he thought anyone was cooler. He hurries over, stopping short of hugging Hermann but unsure of what to do with his hands otherwise.

“Are you okay?” he asks awkwardly. “That was pretty intense.”

“Yes,” Hermann says. “I’m afraid he called you several things.”

“That’s fine,” Newt says. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t,” Hermann frowns, “But it does.”

“Why was he here?”

“I don’t know. To reconcile, but not to apologize. He always thinks he can do things in his own order,” Hermann says. “Perhaps he will realize that isn’t an option in this matter. What were we doing? Going for drinks at Tendo’s?”

“Who says we gotta wait until we get to my place?” Tendo asks, and pulls out three hotel fridge sized bottles of whiskey from his pockets.


	11. Chapter 11

Their first joint nightmare occurs when they are apart, the doomed landscape of the Kaiju world and the unbreathable air, suffocating them. Hermann wakes up, turns on his side as much as he can because he feels as though he is drowning, and can feel a faint spike of panic which isn’t his own. He manages to catch his breath, and reaches for his phone, to call Newton. It rings for an unbearably long time, but then Newton picks up.

“H-hey,” Newton says, his voice high and strained. “Did you hate that as much as I did?”

“Yes. We should probably take notes before we are too removed from the event,” Hermann says, willing his hand to stop shaking. Newton exhales.

“You’re right,” he says. “That’s a pretty unique Ghost Drift. Let me get a pen.”

They stay on the phone for hours after that, comparing heart rates and the elements of the experience, comparing postulations and arguing heartily about whether the dream was a Kaiju memory or simply a dream borrowing imagery from the Drift. It’s two in the morning before they run out of steam, and Hermann lies down in bed, phone pressed to his ear.

“If these are just dreams, we should be able to control them.”

“I can’t control my dreams,” Newton rebuts. “Are you saying you can control yours?”

“I don’t remember my dreams,” Hermann says. “My point is Ghost Drifts are mostly memory. Why would this be different?”

“Because we used a Kaiju like a Jaeger,” Newton says, forcing his words out through a yawn. “Look, I’m beat. Hopefully if we do this again, we land in a nice memory. Dream. Whatever.”

“One of yours,” Hermann nods. “The lake you went to with your uncle. Looking for tadpoles.”

“That would be nice.”

There’s a long silence, and Hermann wonders if Newton’s drifted off.

“Newton?”

“Yeah, just thinking,” Newton says. “About if Raleigh remembers much about the Kaiju world. We could cross-reference our impressions with his observations. That might put some of this dream/memory stuff to bed.”

“Perhaps.”

“Let’s do that tomorrow. I’m going to try and sleep.”

“Very good,” Hermann pauses. “Good night, Newton.”

“Night.”

Hermann hangs up, and looks around his room. It’s childish, but he doesn’t want to turn off the lights, wishes he could have spoken with Newton for a little longer. He won’t get to sleep with this kind of angst. He finds his cane, gets up and goes to his kitchen for some tea.

Chamomile flowers bob in his green teapot, and Hermann drops a couple rock sugars into his favourite cup, a chipped blue mug with a worn golden rim. A Geiszler craving for a very sugary American sweet hits him as he pours his first cup; he finds the box of Oreos in his cupboard and takes a couple with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. Though it is of course his own physiological impulse, Hermann often feels as though he is indulging Newton in moments like this. Oreos don’t even go with chamomile, but he consumes both quite happily.

His leg twinges, a warning of future cramps, and Hermann sighs. Perhaps he took the last few days of relative painlessness for granted, or maybe the pure euphoria of grabbing the world away from its end muted the discomfort, but the usual signs of overexertion and recklessness have returned. The first order of business, once his life returns to whatever normalcy can possibly be expected, is to resume work with a physical therapist, and try and compensate for years of neglecting his physical health in exchange for intellectual rigor.

For now, he rubs the hurting spot and hope Newton can’t feel it from across the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter today! Freuliches Neues Jahr y'all


	12. Epilogue

When Hermann is a lonely boy away from home for the first time, he spends ages in the school’s music room, letting the piano’s sound rattle against the walls, resonating against the piece’s ideal sound locked in his mind. He thinks about the day, thinks about interactions which would have gone better if he’d had the time to prepare.

This is a memory. But the Drift ensures he isn’t alone, past, present, or future. Newt the same age, writes on the music’s room’s wall, or on the whiteboard in a classroom during his short-lived stint at high school. Spidery scrawl, barely legible, blossoms from his stubby marker and he turns around, pulling his gum out from his mouth and throwing it on the ground.

“In conclusion,” he says. “This curriculum is  _ fucked  _ and y’all need new textbooks. I’m out of here.”

At the piano, Hermann smiles, and Newt catches his eye with a grin of his own. Hermann doesn’t remember his dreams, and Newt doesn’t think this is a dream, but it hardly matters here, in the new space that can only be made when two people come together but don’t break, or mesh.

Newt wakes up and actually goes online to buy plane tickets to visit his dad. His dad loves him after all, and always has.

Hermann finally manages to get to sleep, watching the sun rise from the window in his little apartment. Today he won't go to work, and that'll be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this an epilogue, or the posey of a ring?
> 
> This story is wrapped up, but I intend on writing more on this- maybe not multichaps, but one offs and snapchats? Thanks for reading, commenting and kudos!


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